Most of us are awfully picky about scent. I can scarcely bear to be in the same room as 98 per cent of the ones on the market and still yearn for the original formulas of the scents that I first fell in love with - Guerlain's magical Jicky, l'Heure Bleue, Mitsouko and Shalimar.

If you're so picky that you can't find what you want, or you want something that nobody else is wearing, there's only one route to choose - the bespoke scent.

The master of the art is the great Roja Dove, who, from his haut parfumerie on the fifth floor of Harrods, will give you a masterclass in the art of structuring a fragrance and devise something that is as near olfactory perfection as you can get. But - and it's an awfully big but - he is very expensive. Something like £20,000 a time.

There are, happily, other less expensive ways of doing it. Lynn Miller, who is the “nose” behind Miller Harris's gorgeous scents (www.millerharris.com), will make you one in something like eight months for about £8,000. Floris, one of the oldest perfumers in the world, will do one for just £2,500. I made an appointment with Shelagh Foyle, who is what Floris rather grandly calls its “perfumer laureate” (020-7747 3600).

Shelagh then embarked on an intimate discussion of my personal tastes and lifestyle, and discussed my likes (chypres and orientals) and dislikes (sweet florals). I sniffed bits of paper with various ingredients, Shelagh all the while taking extremely detailed notes. It must have worked, because she quickly hit on the sort of perfumes that I like. I came back in a month to be presented with eight fragrances, two of which were very close to something that I really loved.

She'd created a chypre base and taken it in three different directions: one more resinous with lots of green notes, one with marine notes and some peachy fruit, and one with vanilla.

There were variations on each of these and, after much sniffing, adding and subtracting, Shelagh felt she now knew how to arrive at something that would be a replacement for the lost Guerlain perfumes of my youth. She wanted to give me something that I would love as much but that was rather more up-to-date, with what she called “fresh modern jasmine” (how that differs from ancient jasmine, I haven't the faintest notion) and hedione. A few weeks later, a finished version arrived in the post - a little sample that is indeed lovely and that I shall treasure.

The bespoke perfume comes in an antique crystal bottle from Floris's own collection, filled with 100ml of your very own scent and the right to five refills. They are all complex perfumes made the way they were in the 18th century, carefully structured and balanced, made from fine essential oils and floral essences.

Anybody who finds themselves in Florence may like to know that Lorenzo Villoresi (on Via de' Bardi), one of the world's great perfumers, will cook you up a fantastic perfume of your own in a very short time for the equivalent of roughly £1,000.

If there are any men out there looking for a special present to give the woman in their lives, it could be worth considering - rather than giving her a specific perfume, buy her the opportunity to have one of her own made instead.

The Brooklands pen, mentioned in last week's Luxury with Lucia, is manufactured by Tibaldi.

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